


Trial and Error

by Recidiva



Series: Fracture Planes and Hot Chocolate [5]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Ah yes "Reapers", Death and doom and sex, F/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:16:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recidiva/pseuds/Recidiva
Summary: This is bonus content for "Of Kittens and Broken Things" - so spoiler alert if you haven't read it.  The timeline should be between Chapter 75 and 76, within a few weeks after Chapter 75.   I'm re-recording this series for YouTube and it occurred to me that I could add some stuff that I wanted to hear, that I've been thinking about.At the end of the series, a lot of time is skipped and transitions are made unseen.  Drala'tem and Senar have a lot of potential gaps in how transition was achieved and what was said and done that I wanted to clarify.  There's a lot going on with these two and since it's all first person, I found myself on review thinking "Wait... what... exactly happened between A and B, not to mention Q, R and S?"  I figured they'd work it out and I got to the 'worked out' spot, but a quote from Leo Tolstoy occurred to me often when writing this story:  'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'  In this context, Garrus and Cara attained 'happy' somewhere about 3/4 of the way through the story and they stay that way because they'd earned it.  They were conflict resistant.  (Continued in notes)





	Trial and Error

**Author's Note:**

> They're understanding and loving and they patch each other up fast. So check in on them and Cara is happily propped up in Garrus's lap on pillows, he's feeding her something delicious. They're both reading about their chosen nerd addictions and they're blissfully happy. Pretty much every day. Done deal. Not complicated, reliable and all the good stuff true love is without drama. (Eventually.) So the idea of 'equal time' spent on describing the relationships got complicated. Because then there are the other two problem children. (You're not a problem, Russ, you're perfect. Mwah.) In comparison there was never any peace or any predictable outcome or anything solid. More like walking into a haunted house, screams and stories behind every door and most of the drawers. I tried not to lean the story to overshadow Garrus and Cara as the ideal romance by favoring the haunted house in screen time, but I ended up not telling their story fully and a lot of their time was conflict and not technically romance based. So this is an attempt to clarify some things that were vague or implied that I later realized could have gone either horribly right or horribly wrong in resolution. I did sort of want a squick factor in the unknown resolution, but now i also like the... squick factor in the known resolution? In the story I showed Drala'tem in scrambling distress and then I showed her ultimate state of mind, but it matters how she got from one to the other considering her extraordinary circumstances. This is from her point of view, processing her circumstances and making unambiguous choices about the outcomes. Some of it was pure fun and some made me cry. The resolution stays the same and this is all consistent with the original story, intended as a more solid breakdown of narrative analysis defining the bones of their relationship and the anatomy of where certain plot points and conflicts fell on the 'wait, what happened?' scale. It answers some questions she, he and I worked out together and leaves them with the mechanics to resolve future issues and as usual I felt better and much worse at the end with these guys.
> 
> It's a lot of tell, don't show, but I've decided I like telling and I hope you enjoy reading yet another chapter where these two sit in one place and talk a lot. There might be a bit more than talking, but they're still in one place... technically. As usual, it's complicated.
> 
> I see you roll your eyes, Moya! We can't all be exposition resistant by design! 
> 
> Squeaky wheels, meet grease. Or maybe lube.

Waking up had become a new thing in this new place, in what she’d thought would be a new body but was her old body, even though ‘old’ was defined as ‘two years.’ There were no resurrection support groups and had there been one, she still would not have attended. Oh and yeah, she was a Reaper. Surprise! Again. Someday that would be ‘old’ news. Maybe in two years? Her identity and mortality had often been fluid and negotiable, razor-edged thin in terms of legitimacy. She’d had enough time on Sanctuary that she no longer woke up and began to obsess on how to defeat Reapers, but she did have a retained and lifelong habit of her thoughts jumping to ‘what to think about today’ as her brain woke up. The blank and full spaces in her mind were overwhelming. Today would not be about virce lore or genetics or pain painted in vivid Prothean arterial spray. All of those things belonged to the other Cara. She was still adjusting to pronouns and proper names. She wasn’t Cara anymore, she was Drala’tem and Cara was Limayeth in many ways, having picked that name back up in the same way that she had reclaimed the name of Shepard. Decisions borne of reluctant necessity. Front door of the fortress open and sunny but dungeons and deep wells with hidden entrances blocked, locked and caltropped. Caltropping was an active verb now. Garrus did not go there, respected her silent places and likely knew so much more than he said. By not triggering her alarms in any way he allowed her to heal. There were no virce here, genetics at the moment would be duplicated effort and hearing Prothean screams all day was not what she wished for Senar to experience through communion with her. That had been a private thing that she realized now had been excruciating for him as he felt it helplessly, unable to stem her self recriminations or grief without intervening by using his Control over her. 

Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

She could empathize with that.

She had not had much time to prepare for identity separation. She had chosen to try to move from grief to acceptance preemptively. She believed she had done her best there. The galaxy had been at stake. However, ‘acceptance’ of all the new/old issues that flooded her mind in prioritized clamor seemed impossible. With the way Senar had set up his conditions, should she tell Limayeth that she was the duplicate? It would maybe be cruel and unnecessary, could not be confirmed and in the end the fact that Senar was possessive and tricksy was not new information to anyone. But she knew that Limayeth wanted to know, they both wanted resolution, felt she owed it to herself. 

But not yet. She wasn’t done thinking about it.

It wasn’t the duplication itself that pained her. It was the stripping of Cara and Garrus’s original bond that had been intentionally and cruelly invasive and most selfish on Senar’s part. How could she ‘accept’ the fact that their bond had been erased? Tears flooded her closed eyes and it seemed… was… a betrayal she had created.

But then there had been a completely perfect duplication that had not been altered. And those people believed themselves to be unaltered (she couldn’t even process the concept of ‘everyone’s a Reaper now’ yet, stick to this subject) and they’d both agreed to being a duplicate with a new life potentially. One bond had been intended to be removed, one bond had been removed, mathematically speaking.

She hated knowing this. ‘Hate’ and ‘anger’ were still relatively new things in her mind. She’d always managed acceptance and forgiveness - or pretended she did - before. Now she had to achieve it in real terms because to offer Senar counterfeit acceptance or forgiveness would be impossible. He’d know. Her hate wasn’t violent and neither was her anger. They were expressions of amplified volume and intensity of pain. It was a claustrophobic bottleneck, inescapable and panic-inducing in the way dying had been. She felt helpless and with no ‘right’ choices to make, only regret for the choices she had made that dictated the helplessness. 

She thought enough of herself to believe that even if she did tell herself, maybe it wouldn’t matter. The more time that passed between now and that potential disclosure the better. If she did ever choose to re-join with herself - how would that work she had no idea - she would make certain that fluid identity and legitimacy razor edges would be neglected, blunted and rust flaked if not entirely eroded into irrelevance. The only things that would matter would be the choices Limayeth had made, not the ones made for her. 

Senar was telling the truths he had promised her. She chose to believe that because there was no way to verify truth independently. If she began their relationship with recrimination and accusation - more than she already had, what with confessing everything through Control default, including the fact that some of her helpless proto-anger and hate was directed at him - that would be bad. It was wisest to move to acceptance. If there was a burden to bear, she would bear it with Senar, one more binding intimacy that was theirs alone. Likely as he intended. He was possessive in ways twinned and twined Drala’tem/Limayeth were not and would not be. 

The concepts of hate and anger gained momentum and barrelled off mental cliffs heedlessly.

Maybe if she’d accessed hate and anger earlier she would have seen more of this coming and she could have countered it.

Maybe she should consider reversing a lifetime ban.

Maybe this was how he was going to torture her. Maybe none of it was true, crafted and weighted lies to crush her into compliance and collusion. A crude dungeon with a flickering torch was unnecessary when she brought her own elaborate dungeons with her. He could watch her torture herself. He could tastefully make it worse whenever he chose if she began to feel better. Which was not likely.

Garrus. Garrus would be devastated and infuriated if he knew his agreement to duplicate himself had meant the erasure of his original bond and that as a result he was a Reaper with no recourse, no ability to defend or reclaim himself or his bond mate(s) from Senar. He’d see it as unforgivable abandonment of his bond mate(s) and he’d want to demand Drala’tem back, keep Limayeth, kill Senar. Kill Senar a lot. More than he already did. It had been only her will that had kept Garrus from killing Senar for violating her (their… his...) privacy in ways that right now seemed clumsy and adorable in comparison. 

The entire purpose of this had been to not devastate Garrus. So stick to that mission. Like choosing Kasumi’s graybox as an achievable objective and abandoning otherwise unseen suffering outside the scope of her set parameters and capabilities. She could maybe tell Limayeth about everything, but that would place an impossible-to-hold burden of anger, guilt and subsequent confession and condemnation on her and then ultimately him. 

Limayeth would want to volunteer to join Senar instead, Garrus wouldn’t allow that either, would never allow another bond to be erased. He’d want and need to protect both women from past and future violation. Suspicious and compelled trust in Senar would be obliterated and cooperation impossible.

Would Senar's possessiveness and selfishness ultimately drive him to require that both Drala’tem and Limayeth choose him? Was he building another palace and constructing another self in anticipation of that event? 

Garrus had allowed duplication because he believed Cara wanted Senar and because Russ clearly wanted him.

Mostly because he wouldn’t have to worry about Senar anymore. 

This would definitely make him worry about Senar.

Prove that Cara was unhappy with Senar and Garrus would regret his choice to homicidal extremes. Russ would see regret and Limayeth would consider herself an expendable third wheel. Not even a third wheel, a flat tire to be abandoned on the side of the road. Suicidal extremes matching Garrus’s homicidal extremes.

Garrus was possessive. Rightfully so. He had been outraged and angry throughout his entire acquaintance with Senar, rightfully so, and Drala’tem had ordered him to not express it.

Was the truth more valuable than happiness? She didn’t want to find out. She didn’t want one more ignorant miscalculation of hers to cause pain.

Let sleeping… vile… God choices… lie. 

Keeping the ‘original’ Cara Fanning and altering everyone to his specifications that were simultaneously their specifications and requirements had been a flourish that confirmed for Senar that each duplicate and original was perfectly suited to their (his) chosen fate. It had a dream-slick, satisfying-sick distorted symmetry to it, like witnessing cards being shuffled by a sleight-of-hand master and knowing that the cards had been expertly stacked in the process. She had no choice but to play knowing that she could not alter the deck, prove or even detect his stacking. She grudgingly admired his skill and it was the only game in town. Check that. It was the only game in the galaxy. She knew he had attempted to provide everyone with winning hands but he had required six aces to do it. He certainly assured that his hand would win. He had revealed his hand and hers and left it to her to choose what she would do about it. 

Each paired set had been dealt the cards they needed to complement one another. Each couple was integrally matched and legitimate and that only fell apart if compared to the requirements and limitations of deck and dealer. 

It might be that Senar’s inherent requirement of elegant symmetry demanded that he set it up this way so he didn’t need to look at the people he loved hanging sideways like a lopsided painting only he could see but couldn’t straighten for eternity. Shepard would save the galaxy as had been her will and Cara would be protected from that fate in all ways. Limayeth would not have to watch the news and could remain ignorant of the real struggles that continued after she set down the mantle of responsibility.

The house always wins. 

She would accept that when one makes a deal with a sleight-of-hand master, expect sleight of hand. What could she do? Flag down or hijack local transport? There was none on this planet. Manage that impossibility, fly to Sanctuary and say “Senar has so much control, more than we thought, even though he gave us all the hints and information we needed to know it was there. Yeah, we knew he was a God, but is there a word like ‘Godder?’ He’s Godder. He’s Goddest! He stole me but I went along with it… but I don’t know if I really… went along with it or it went along with me.” She imagined trailing off into complicated incoherencies as Russ swallowed whatever he was chewing calmly and say in his ‘duh’ voice “Really? Who could have predicted that? Look, I love you, whatever-your-name-is-now, but I’m happy and I have immortality and the man I have always loved and I will… kill you… both of you maybe… if you upset him. I’d get two Garruses and they’d finally both have a bond mate that wasn’t a dumbass who worries about all the wrong things. If you’re not happy maybe you can ask your Goddest boyfriend to fix it for you. Maybe remember that a little while back we were trying to survive a few more hours before we ended up in a beaker somewhere in cold storage. This is better. You know the glass half full/half empty thing? Here’s my answer. I’ve got a full bottle of ale and all the Reaper beakers have been repurposed and you can put whatever the fuck you want in ‘em. Just not my bond mate’s heart.” 

And he’d be right. He would play his cards to his best advantage.

If she tried to play everyone’s hand for them, they would all lose.

But in order for them to ‘win’ she had to smile and validate circumstances that she knew would horrify and appall Garrus as much as she was horrified and appalled.

Tell the truth and she ruined the fragile potential that might result in happiness that relied upon subjective value judgements and trust.

Tell a lie and she was complicit, validating Senar’s schemes.

So… don’t say anything. Stay away from Sanctuary. Stay away from them. If she was to ever re-join, ask Senar to lock that information away, make it impossible to disclose. She was sure he could. If he couldn’t right now, he’d figure it out for her. For all of them. Senar had given her the opportunity to find cover and keep to herself and she would do that. Selfishly in many ways, possibly even cowardly. Like locking herself in the bathroom at the salon. Stay down and dark and quiet until the storm passed and she could think again, somehow, maybe, clearly.

She needed time.

Well, she had eternity, so there’s that.

Maybe Garrus knew the risks, knew the potentials, got true love and immortality out of it for those he loved and wasn’t about to throw that away without extraordinary cause, and maybe ‘original bond’ wasn’t extraordinary in the balance of what was at stake. He was an extraordinary man who had taken risks knowing they could backfire or cost him everything about himself or her that he valued. He’d hated Senar and Drala’tem had forced him to coexist every day and now he had a potential break from having that shoved in his plates moment to moment. 

Garrus, both of him, would revolt if she said revolt. Just like he’d risked his life on every mission, sacrificed his happiness and personal choices as Councilor and risked his bond mate’s life and mind to the vagaries of venom at her call.

So don’t say revolt, whatever-your-name-is-now.

To hatred and anger, add the bass note to the clamor. Unbearable guilt.

Make it borne guilt.

Count on Garrus being the hero he always was, always will be. Don’t provoke his anger. Don’t express your own.

Listen to Russ and realize that in perspective, though not perfect, this is so much better than the outcome in every other cycle.

Be a hero yourself. 

‘Better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’

So that’s all she could shoot for? Preserving doubt? Everyone doubted that Drala’tem would find happiness or peace. But it was best if everyone believed there was potential that she could and that she consented to the opportunity.

Accept that you can’t confess or hug Garrus for his heroism after the fact. Accept that this hurts more than you thought possible. Accept that this urge primarily stems from what was your right a little while ago, being able to tell Garrus everything and share your life and thoughts with him every day if not every hour. Accept that you can't do that ever again. 

Accept that you can’t help telling Senar everything and that you have no privacy and never will.

She imagined in quick cascade what would really happen if she demanded her moment of revelation. Maybe she just wanted to see Garrus, know he was okay, hug Kimin… 

Yes. Please.

She considered asking Senar “Can you take me back to Sanctuary so I can tattle on you and me? I mean, I know I can’t possibly make things better by going, sure, but somehow I’ve still gotta do it. Please let me see him. Please? I thought I could do this, but I can't stand it.” Then she imagined the transparent and pathetic pleading “Just this once. I’ll come right back to stay… whatever you want…”

No doubt he’d bring her to Sanctuary with his Godly glowing and knowing disapproval and she’d sit at the farm table unable to look at anybody’s faces and confess with the grace of coughing up sawdust. In the end nobody would have learned anything. Particularly not her. Senar would shrug, put another hashmark in the ‘No, I really don’t have to torture her at all, she is a perpetual-motion agony machine beyond my capacity to create’ column as she sputtered “Well, turns out eternity is hard. I know Cara is in charge here, can I still have a room? Just for a little while? Watching you all day to day and... yeah. I think I’ll be going. Good luck, all of you, don’t let my horrific, irrelevant and utterly predictable disclosures ruin your proposed perfect happiness in the future, okay? I’ll just clean the bloody sawdust off this lovely table that isn’t mine anymore and go. I’ll be fine. Don't worry about me.”

Ensuring they would do exactly that every moment. 

Like they weren't already. 

Senar was declaring that she had in fact belonged to him all along, that the Sand, Crucible and above all his and her wills had made it so and that he would honor that fact as the crystallizing choice that held together the core of the new galaxy and reality he created. If she declared revolt he could declare ‘forget’ for all of them. After seeing the results of her rash confession and subsequent ruining of any potential happiness she might end up begging him to do it. Or he might bear the hostility and anger as he’d borne Prothean voices. 

She’d expected much worse. But she had expected direct worse and instead found insidious and inevitable Control. She had agreed with each step and that agreement, that shadow of tragically uninformed consent had legitimized what he’d done. She was complicit and responsible for his deceptions.

Just as with Sooth, the act of observation here could change the patterns that affected not just her but the fate of the ongoing creation and maintenance of the galaxy under Senar’s Control. 

The thought of Sooth reset her viewpoint like an EMP shockwave. She missed her. She’d failed her. It was a measure of how much pain she was already in that it barely registered on her numb and torn psyche other than the flash and then subsequent dark.

Her mind reached back to times in her life where she’d made the wrong choices, where being wiser, quicker and craftier would have changed things. It hadn’t been wrong to recruit Thane Krios. It had been wrong to defeat him at Pon-Ifa repeatedly with so much game-blinded enthusiasm, ignoring and insulting him as a man while assuming he was losing on purpose and that he was ‘sweet.’ It had been wrong to hold scissored spring blades to his spine and inform him coldly that she would kill him if his mere presence did not stop wasting her infinitely more valuable time.

In retrospect so many problems could have been solved by staying in her cabin at the right times without him in it. Because of her indulgence in hot chocolate, games and high strategy while ignoring people and their real needs (including herself) the galaxy now had Senar Tuelon at the helm, solely and solidly.

Great job, Drala’tem, you ‘saved’ the forest without understanding any of the trees and Birnam Wood marched to Dunsinane.

So the isolated palace made perfect sense. It had been chosen by him as what they would ultimately both need once she figured out what he already knew. He wanted her selfishly and exclusively, required her physical and emotional disconnection from the outer galaxy, Sanctuary in particular and Garrus specifically. He could treat her emotional and physical withdrawal from Garrus with introduction of venom and trance. Whether he savored or abhorred them or a combination of both he was prepared for her panic, fear and pain. He was her only recourse to escape them, though she had insisted on keeping them and he had no doubt anticipated that as well. She was in the most exclusive rehab ever conceived. No escape and no voluntary discharge were traditional. The non-traditional twist being that at the end of her therapeutic course she would be irrevocably reliant on and addicted to him. He had assured she was radioactive guilt on the subject of Garrus and therefore she would not go anywhere near him in order to protect him. 

She had in fact consigned one of her selves to potential hell in order to provide bliss to those she loved and the stability of the galaxy. The hell she had brought with her had already carried so much weight of guilt that adding more didn't tip any scales, only clarified the magnitude of compounded errors. Drowning five feet versus several leagues underwater resulted in the same thing. One had more pressure and less light and a new strata of beasties of the deep, but it had the same effect on lungs. 

She had offered sacrifice of self in the same way Senar had at the Crucible, grateful in a way to do it, to not owe him anything more because she had given everything. She’d thought she was giving only herself, but he’d taken people’s free will like chips to be cashed in at any point.

Was that fair? He’d been given Control at the Crucible. He hadn’t asked for that.

Yeah, he had. He’d demanded it. He’d cheated to get it.

Would he have taken it had he known what it would entail? 

She almost laughed. He’d have taken it so fast. So very fast. 

The galaxy was hostage to her good behavior.

There was a good if not great argument to be made that the galaxy owed any potential future at all to his expert, suspected but undetected deck stacking. 

Yeah, that wasn’t helping. Had she been left to play her cards her way she and Garrus would have belonged to themselves and to each other only, dead or alive. They would both prefer it that way given the alternatives of puppetry and dilution of authority and legitimacy into oblivion.

Of course they might be in beakers at this point, but they’d be peaceful beakers? Non-guilty, unambiguously heroic… beakers?

Still not helping.

She recalled the bitterness in Senar’s tone when he had appealed to her martyrdom in order to secure her consent. He knew he could have arranged for all manner of more favorable outcomes, such as her begging for the right to run away with him. Instead he had found himself in the whimsical cupcake woods he had provided bargaining with an impossible woman who had run away at the idea. Consent was a convenient fiction he could have arranged at any point, but he’d still given her the chance to find some way, any way, to give it before his Control snapped and he forced it or it forced him.

For a moment her perspective flipped and she nearly smiled at all the frustration and irritation she had caused the man. He was brilliant, he was handsome, he was charming, he was accomplished, he loved her, he wanted her, he was a God who vowed to dedicate himself to creating a perfect galaxy and attribute that inspiration to her and she still… persisted in being so very… 

So very.

She’d feel sorry for him but maybe at some point he could have taken the hint.

Nope.

Maybe hint taking wasn’t in either of their skill sets.

Maybe this WAS the resurrection support group.

She tried to be fair. She believed she had consented. She’d been uninformed but for admittedly good reasons. He’d told her there were things he would not tell her. He’d told her painful and easily-concealed truths that would never have occurred to her to suspect. He had provided for the conditions where she would consent. Yet one of his truths was that regardless of what she thought or how she felt, had she been uncooperative he would have eventually fallen to the temptation to ‘recover her from archive’ - pause for existential shudder of EMP proportions - and that implied that he would prune her more undesirable traits and graft on different ones, possibly clear-skinned and red dress wearing ones, keeping her that way if she had not agreed in her original, loosely defined as ‘natural’ (synesthesia and desperation and venom-prone… resurrected… Reverie addled… two-year-old... Prothean grief injected...) state.

Who knew if he’d ‘nudged’ her into ‘consent’ through pure intent he could not control?

She did know he could have put out no effort into courting her consent at all and taken her in the cruelest way, robbed Garrus of her painfully, made her break bond herself seemingly willingly. 

He hadn't.

He had given those in the outside galaxy the appearance of her full consent. He’d brought her witnessed dowry gifts of sacrificing his life, bringing her a beloved daughter, bringing her Reapers as tools, a promise of free will, her father’s bread, an inspirational glow, a planet, restraint, health and happiness for her loved ones and cupcake trees. 

She really didn’t worry about Russ so much. He’d been all in on immortality to begin with. Senar had been his wing man at the Crucible and afterward and he’d required no venom. If she told him he was a Reaper and that guaranteed that he’d always be backed up in archive and therefore eligible to full restoration at any moment and his Garrus was too, she imagined a huge smile and two thumbs up, glowing blue. 

She imagined telling him that meant Senar could control him and him shrugging “Why would he? He’s got you now, that’s all the man ever wanted. Excuse me. God. Senar wants a favor from me, he can just ask. He Controls trillions of platforms, why would he need me, pity clone? He drove you here and now he’s standing right behind you listening to you badmouth him and waiting until you decide the next unreasonable thing you want, which I am assuming he will get for you as soon as you ask. So I see things are just the way they’ve always been. Hey, Senar.”

He wasn’t wrong.

There was no way to stop Senar from doing what he was doing. All she could hope to do was influence him. She should not degrade his potential dedication to her inspiration, drive him to reboot individual brains so people stopped being tediously ungrateful, possibly decide she was not rewarding as a prize and therefore the ongoing struggle of the galaxy need not concern him as she had not felt it necessary to honor his sacrifice-and-subterfuge-laden offer to be a responsible caretaker for eternity.

The bottleneck reasserted the ‘helpless’ aspect and she knew struggle was useless. Saying no had been ultimately impossible, she had known that even before he’d told her just exactly how impossible it really had been and would always be. Escalation had been assured. In some ways nothing had changed. She’d already decided torture and death would be something she’d give willingly in order to protect the galaxy from his potential displeasure. It being a different flavor of potential torture and that death was entirely off the table despite her wishes on the subject didn't change her mind. 

If she hated him as a result of his truths and choices, that would not change his mind. 

He wasn’t taking anything she hadn’t already promised herself was his by right. He couldn’t steal what she gave freely.

Perhaps a new deck stacked by a new God in his new creation could have six genuine aces.

It remained that she was a wincing, calculating martyr and infuriated pawn with no hope of serenely concealing that fact. Any caltropping she did or had done in the past was wasted and fruitless other than tearing up her feet and hands as she scrambled to retrieve them or forgot where they were. He could casually appear in the wells and dungeons and suggest redecorating projects to enhance the space. 

‘Drala’tem, if you are going to spend extended time in hell, permit me to improve the ventilation at least.’ 

Her deck was transparent to him and composed of approximately 2.3 cards, her strategy irrelevant as he revealed and analyzed it potentially through trillions of processing platforms in real time.

He was capable of laying down six aces with a straight face at any given moment and she’d have to accept it one way or the other.

Anger and hate were exhausting and she probably couldn’t sustain them for more than a few thousand years.

Ownership of her own thoughts at this point was a treacherous concept. A sharp, astringent psychic pain hit as she fell to her metaphoric knees on caltrops she’d placed herself. She froze in sudden realization, became slowly more aware as dream-state stream of consciousness stuttered and horror blanched her streaking sluggish awareness not of forest but of Drell tree. Her frontal cortex had failed her. Again. Her brain still thought it was a closed circuit, especially when compromised by sleep chemistry. Fears she held at bay while conscious became caricatures and shadow plays. The reality was that her thoughts were pumping directly onto the walls like blood, veins collapsing, patterns Rorschached and revealing. Art he could peruse at his leisure. He heard, he felt, he saw… everything. He was with her. A renewed red flush shocked her system as she decided that yes, now she was awake. 

He was with her here. 

Now. 

Always.

She hadn’t words to describe the raw and flayed exposure of her mind that came about through using it as she always had.

They were on the balcony beholding the eternal symbol and sound of sea. It was night, mosaics of impressionist cobalt moonlight reflecting off the waves. She heard his amused and consoling voice vibrating along the skin at the back of her neck “You do not need words, Drala’tem.”

“I clearly still have them.”

“A blessing.” He sat them both up with her on his lap, facing the sea and moon, an exquisite and artfully framed panorama. She reflexively tried to assess her body on waking and once again found herself adjusting to the new reality of what was missing. No physical pain or discomfort. She experienced a flush and full sense of physical well being even if her mind was spinning out due to squealing, embarrassed and appalled exposure. No cramps or need to stretch. That was fair as pain now served no real purpose and he would feel it too. It was also a rebuke to her intended masochism. No doubt he bloody-mindedly enjoyed that. 

He kissed the back of her neck “I do enjoy ensuring you are not in pain, but bloody-mindedness is not confined to me.”

“Thought salad and puns for breakfast.”

She’d had so many moments of unguarded and painful vulnerability since arrival here. She stubbornly persisted in not asking what the name of ‘here’ was because that would remind her that there was a named ‘there’ and she refused to allow polarity. She would only validate ‘here’ and ‘now’ while conscious and therefore relatively more sane. Despite her worst fears rampaging and leaving bloody tracks on the parquet when she slept, he did not make her waking experience of them worse. He accepted them as part of her and encouraged her to do the same, something she was trying to learn how to do. He also could not mitigate them unless she asked for his help, which she didn't. Fears tumbled out of her, spontaneous frenetically composed melody, derived from the same basic scales and themes. He shifted his focus to a side table, brought a cup to her lips and whatever was inside, unfamiliar to her in flavor, was exactly what she wanted to drink, bringing pure eyes-closed reflexive pleasure, his hand caressing her throat as she swallowed. The food was exactly what she wanted to eat in the same blissfully ignorant way, augmented with gold light and venom from his fingertips. His thumb lingered on her lips, stroked the inner curve and then withdrew.

She wondered if bliss could ever become boring, considering the time frame involved with eternity. 

Senar would never permit boring.

She considered briefly the bloody mindedness of demanding he allowed her fear and now boredom as her inviolate right to the messed up echo chamber that was her mind.

Turning her head to look at his face, she saw tension and pensive intensity. Okay, so acceptance and understanding was difficult for both of them and there were always new variations and accusations as she twisted in on herself. She extended a fingertip as gentle as his had been, tracing the line of his lower lip. His eyes drifted closed, a vulnerable tremor in his arms and spine that drew her in and made her ask him “Tell me.”

“I stole you, my Drala’tem.”

She smiled as his eyes remained closed and the tremor faded. “Well, at least I decided you already had the right to do it before I got here. And are you planning on giving me back out of guilt?”

Then his eyes opened and his smile matched hers “Never.”

Her soft smile widened into a knowing grin “And to think I figured that out all on my own.”

His eyes closed in a drift and glide of his graceful humor and then reopened as he said “Well, you are terribly clever.”

Her hands moved to either side of his face, thumbs stroking along the inner curve of his frill, her fingertips reacquainting themselves with ribs of scarlet that her mind registered with confusion were not plate, therefore something must be wrong. “And I will potentially think of Garrus when you… and I... want me to think of you?”

“Perhaps I will always be ‘not plate.’”

“Perhaps so. And can you bear that or will you give me back out of frustration?”

The teasing tone in her voice allowed him an unapologetic “Never” in response. 

“So these are our facts and the basis of all future mistakes.”

“Yes.”

She shuffled it through her mind and refused to accept ‘impossible to overcome,’ his head tilting as he regarded her curiously. A flash idea occurred to her and she said “If… I had a time machine…”

“Which, although I am a God, I cannot provide to you as I am not that sort of God.”

“I know that, Mr. Deity Pants.” That brought an unaccustomed near cough of a laugh from him and she was grateful to hear it, the permission to be at ease with her evident in his eyes. She continued “IF I had a time machine provided by some other God or Goddess I would go back in time and kidnap you before your sixth birthday. You wouldn’t like the weird human lady and you’d want to go back home and I wouldn’t let you. You’d hate me.”

His smile was a rich thing “That would be a likely outcome. I was a selfish, spoiled child.”

“You were a selfish and spoiled adult.”

“I will likely prove to be a selfish and spoiled God who cannot provide time machines on demand.”

“And I figured that out myself too. Waaay before I got here, by the way. So my time machine might not be that well utilized. How to win the affections of a young, stubborn, idealistic and religiously inspired Drell child who I am potentially robbing of his destiny in order to grant him peace?”

“I was partial to vanisfruit.”

“Good to know. So I bribe you in the middle of the night with something yummy and keep you in a crate until you choose to be reasonable about the whole rescue thing.”

“I would possibly develop the capacity to murder spontaneously.”

“Right. So I suck at time travel. What would you do with the time machine?”

“Drala’tem, I would wish to save Mindoir and your parents, save you, keep you safe and defeat the Reapers.”

“What about wiping out Reapers before they get started?”

“My purpose would be you. Wiping out Reapers cycles ago would create a circumstance whereby I could not guarantee knowing the assured time and place of your birth.”

“So you wouldn’t save everyone else - just me?”

“Yes.”

“Romantic. Terrible strategy and costing quadrillions of lives to liquefied pain, but romantic. What about saving Irikah?”

“The only threat to her came from my presence in her life. If I never encounter her, she would be safe and likely happy, her love having blessed someone else. Someone less romantic.”

“So by my sixteenth birthday you’d kidnap me and my parents, keep us in crates?”

“Perhaps I could utilize the time machine to better effect. I would settle upon Mindoir on a nearby farm. I would not be detected as missing from Mindoir occasionally as I destroyed Batarian slaver networks. I could arrive back at the farm the moment after I left. I could be a part of your life from the day you were born. I could trade recipes with your father and spar with your mother. Perhaps I could teach you Pon-Ifa. Perhaps you could teach me Pon-Ifa.”

“Wouldn’t that be a little weird, me falling for a mysterious older Drell man, the only one in a human colony?”

“Undoubtedly, but as I am selfish and spoiled…”

“And very persuasive…”

“You might not object to certain forms of weird accompanied by books, conversation, games, kittens and cookies.”

She grinned and leaned in for a light brush of her lips on his “All right. You get to drive the time machine.”

“Drala’tem, I would undergo my training again for you, for what you need.”

“I know you would do the most good you could do… and that I would eventually find things to be at least slightly weird.”

“And that I would never give you up.”

“And that you would steal me if I were uncooperative. Just like I would steal a young Drell boy despite his objections.”

His head tilted to the side, his expression achingly sad and she wanted to lean in again to kiss him, replace that look with a closed-eyed tremor. He said in stark examination “And that you wish to rescue me… but not keep me for yourself.”

“Well… I’m not good at taking things or people for myself.”

“You do not believe you need me, Drala’tem.”

She smiled over the crumbling awfulness of his words, of his meaning “I’m pretty sure I can’t survive here without you.”

“Because you will have no choice.”

The seriousness of her eyes met his and she did not try to deny or evade, there was no point to that. “But I did have choices and I made them. Senar, inafer i’mae. Where we are, who we are, is beyond choice and is composed of necessity and now. You believe it was fate. I can believe it was and is fate. I believe you would keep the pain of your training to aid me, to keep me. I believe you would give up Irikah to spare her the pain you know you brought her. I believe it would be intended to give Kolyat’s Spirit a chance to find what you consider a better destiny than being your son. I believe you would work your will seamlessly with or against the Sand as necessary.”

“And what of the sin of theft? What of Garrus?”

She had thought ‘what of Garrus' so often, about keeping him and letting him go to protect him from herself or Senar or both in combination… and Senar knew all of those thoughts, the chill of raw exposure crackling like shards of biting ice on exposed nerve. She wanted Garrus to live happily ever after with the woman he loved, even or especially if she wasn’t that woman. She paradoxically wanted the same for Senar. She wanted it for her parents. She wanted it for Russ. She wanted Protheans she remembered from inside their own experiences of their lives to be newly living and thriving. She wanted it for everyone, past and present. “My strength isn't in wanting things for myself. You know I didn’t think about what I could have with you or for myself other than to know I’d done all I could do to give other people - that includes you, by the way - their best lives. You know I wanted answers and results and that I was not romantic. Just as you won’t apologize or change your mind, neither will I. You knew and know all of this and you still chose to move forward. I am still catching up on what it all means and what I can do with that. Me left to my own nature, I would have run away from Garrus. I still think he would have led a better life without me. He can't read my mind though. I stopped saying it and dedicated myself to the fact that he wanted me and being with me made him happy and that made me - her - happy. That’s the romantic part. It wasn’t about sex, even with him. Not that sex was bad. Well, you know that too. What I chose for him, to be Councilor, helped save the galaxy. I wanted answers and results. If I’d pursued what I wanted for myself I would have given him some sign of interest. I actively avoided doing that except where I couldn’t help myself. I loved him. I didn’t dare to want him. And that wasn’t just out of fear of the unknown. A lot of thought about the known went into it that decision. I doubt you’re going to change me into someone who thinks about what I want separate from context. But you need me, you want me and you are offering me answers and results. The galaxy is saved and you will continue to save it more than I can or could. I don't know who I am or who I am going to be yet. Circumstances have always dictated that for me and I’ve adapted. Do you know after the fact, can you tell me - after Intai’sei - how much of my attraction to you was caused by your venom and suggestion? Was me wanting to kiss you part of me or something you left behind in place of my free will?”

His hands moved along her face, a thumb along her cheekbone and then smoothing the creases between her brows “Your synesthesia was the overwhelming factor that guided your actions, aided by your expert dissembling and intuitive genius. They guided you to recruit me. They guided you to trust me. As much as you consider me to be a person of somewhat blind and occasionally convenient faith in my insistence upon the Sands, my dedication to the vagaries of the Gods pales before your faith in your internal guidance. Your desire to solve the mystery of why I glowed for you guided your choices. As I attempted to dig a channel to you I was doing so in a way that only deepened the pre-existing canyon of that faith. Your terror and caution did not keep you from trust, but as you say, there was an avoidance of, aversion to, desire. Recognizing that I was lethal made Shepard need me for her mission. Recognizing that I was intelligent made Cara wary of discovery of her secrets. Recognizing that I was physically attractive made both Shepard and Cara wish to keep their distance to avoid any temptation or conflict. So your initial reaction to me was not attraction but aversion, though you wished to be polite and not ostracize me as a result. You were struggling with avoiding desire from and for Garrus and there was no room in your life for more struggle on that front. You avoided the potential for desire wherever possible, giving or receiving. After the Collector ship in the apartment you were deeply prone to venom and my influence by orders of magnitude more than I imagined. Your canyon was cut deep to your core and venom broke through to what flowed beneath, pure and primal. When I suggested to you that you come to me for strength, that intended support in combination with your synesthesia became impossible for you to detect or resist and you did in fact at each moment of vital choice draw strength from my presence and counsel if possible. Factors began to shift more quickly after that suggestion. You knew I was attractive, therefore you were willing to believe that you were attracted to me, you must be. I told you that you were attracted to me in the apartment, you accepted my assessment and the attendant burden of guilt that placed upon you. A valid strategic and intuitive choice regardless of venom as you knew denial could provoke me into wishing to prove it to you. Your capitulation enhanced trust, which was your goal. It also gave me motive to protect your easy vulnerability and innocence. Learning of Kepral’s, Irikah and Kolyat, you grew to care for me. You in fact pitied me, wished to protect me despite all the visceral threat you knew I represented to your command and Garrus’s Councilorship. Time and circumstance caused you to instinctively lean my way when you felt off balance. You never had the luxury of balance. You counted on my presence to steady you, reassure you. The guilt you felt about lying to a friend caused you to feel as though you owed me recompense, leading to the concept of debt that I exploited. I told you there was no door, no threshold, and that was a well-intentioned hope that I turned into a lie and a trap. With no other path to you that I could control other than exploiting debt and guilt, I created as much of it as I could in desperation. I cannot assign agency except to both of us in combination. For each of my moves you made an intuitive counter move composed of strategic subtlety the likes of which you display in battle or on the Pon-Ifa board. I sought always to strike deeper, not knowing I had already accessed the nature of your inherent inspiration, your wellspring.”

“But you earned my trust.”

“In order to exploit it at every opportunity. Not to sabotage your mission, but to become indispensable and draw your eyes to me.”

“By… providing me with support and counsel.”

“And a red dress that haunted my dreams and fantasies.”

“Past tense? Do you want me to look like that now?”

“Past tense, Drala’tem. I want you to look like you. I sought to tempt you with craft but that was a tragic misstep. You were horrified by the location, the setting and my ease in that world. You did not condemn me for it, but I am now horrified at what it cost you by being forced to be a ghost in your own skin and to leave behind slaves.”

“It wasn’t force.”

“Perhaps not classic force, but certainly a crafted temptation you would not resist as you required the reward. A deadfall is still a trap, Drala’tem, even if the force is provided by gravity. I set the trip and the spring knowingly each time. You provided a great deal of gravity for me to exploit. You needed. I provided. The galaxy offered you paths to failure, I offered baited paths to specific success with inherent costs. On Beckenstein you were perfection of adaptation, costume and mission, and the damage casually done to your soul was ultimately repaired by your bond mate and your natural healing capacity. He embodied what you needed. He suppressed his own jealousy and possessiveness in ways I found and clearly still find impossible. He understood how the experience would harm and not help you. After that mission you instinctively moved toward him rather than toward me for excellent reasons.”

“That mission wasn’t to help me, it was to help Kasumi.”

“And I could and should have done that mission alone, Drala’tem. Here I offer you a true apology. You were forced to false and you transmuted your terror and horror into what was required, which was poise and the flawless portrayal of desire, and I was dazzled by your response. You loved and trusted me. I perceived that always as you wanting me. You have ever been willing to love me despite my failings. You still are, somehow. That mission was catastrophic to you personally and to our relationship in ways I had not predicted or detected. I believed the illusion because I wanted it so badly and I had crafted it for that effect. I believed you wanted me, that I had tempted you, that the merits of the craft and results would draw you to me. My certainty of you being attracted to me paradoxically convinced you that you were. The gifts of a kitchen and a kitten after you saved Kolyat were cleaner things, your gratitude and company generous and priceless recompense. Beckenstein created a divide, a demand and a delusion that I regret.”

“I learned a great deal.”

“You learned much. I wish I had not been the person to teach you those lessons, the most prominent being that I am cruel, selfish, smug and blind to greater offered blessings. Secondarily that I was not a source of true comfort and that your bond mate granted you understanding and solace without trap or trigger. Your true-not-true desire was the result of the insidious influence of my venom and suggestion and your metabolizing it through a body with no resistance to its chemistry, a mind prone to need, circumstance prone to gravity and a heart prone to love by her nature. I saw your response as uncovered truth and not induced illusion, always. You repeatedly offered me voluntary love and I chose to believe you offered me involuntary desire.”

“And is that where we are now? That I love you but don’t want you?”

“When I said that your inspiration at the Crucible was transformative, Drala’tem, I did not lie. I finally knew the difference between love and desire. I saw that you had provided undiluted love and I had introduced desire as a petty motivation and goal, something I could not see beyond, something I could understand and control. But the Crucible was not the only moment of transformation I experienced in your presence. You had more influence over me than I had over you in many ways. Just as then, I have potential control, but it is most notable for not being used except to aid your will and keep you from masochistic self destruction. Your synesthesia, which guided you to extend courtesy, love and trust to me, led to me being dependent upon your inspiration in order to grant my continued breath and ultimate rebirth relevance. I say this not to gain sympathy but to honor truth and to hopefully ease your fears. I have not lied to you since you arrived here. I have not perhaps told you all truths or entirely full truths, but there has been much to say and I cannot say it all at once. You cannot absorb it all at once and nothing is so pressing that you must know it now. What can be done to repair damage I have inadvertently or willfully done is being done moment by moment with all my effort. Day to day, what venom took from you was nothing compared to what your trust and eyes inspired me to give. You fear that I hold people’s wills in my pocket, and I do. Consider when I used my venom historically, Drala’tem. I used it to gather information in order to clarify your will because you could not see it or speak it honestly. I did not use my venom knowingly to harm you. I used it to extend your trust in me so you would come to me and consider me someone who would help you. I did help you. I used it deliberately only once to save you from what I believed would be your permanent death. Despite Garrus’s fears and yours, I did not use it to rape you repeatedly in your quarters and force you to forget. I had endless opportunity to use it and I admit I expressed anger, frustration and helplessness on subjects such as Kolyat’s surgery, but I did not use my venom then either. I considered, and consider myself your guardian as my primary duty. That duty now extends to all family and ultimately that extends to the galaxy. Yes, I hold your will in my keeping but I promise you I did not use it to force you to join me here. I gave you reasons to join me here. The ultimate reason why you must join me here is an excellent reason, and it is not so Garrus can be happy or so you can be blissful or that I may have the rape or torture I theoretically crave. Happiness and satisfaction are the intended compensation I hope to provide to you and to those you love to offset the service required of you. You may fear my Control, and it is a potential I cannot and have not denied. I admit I am tempted to subvert your stubborn will when I could stem the pain of your dreams and your fears, but much is the same as it was on the Normandy. The galaxy is still at stake as are your Spirit and heart and mind. As a secondary concern, I must look to my own Spirit and heart and mind and ensure it does not deteriorate out of despair, that I may never fall to battle sleep. I require a guardian of my own. I require your inspiration. Without it, I would return to blindness and self delusion, cut off from the only light that matters to me. You require my service. Without it the galaxy would deteriorate to chaos and your sacrifices would have been in vain as the cycles begin again and war reigns. In some ways the Catalyst was naive. It focused upon synthetic and sentient war, as though the sentient did not wage war each day, sibling against sibling, for the pettiest of reasons, whether they are armed with stone axes or Mass Effect rifles. When I was mortal I tried to make the Normandy safe for Shepard to do her job. I tried to make the Citadel safe for Cara to walk upon it and to live there. I tried to grant Cara Fanning a life with her bond mate. I tried to discover and serve your wills as Shepard and Cara. Your mind, heart and Spirit are capable of self-renewing cleansing and healing. It will take you significantly less than thousands of years to reclaim your wellspring. Limayeth will purge my influence, heal the dependence, disappointment and delusion I helped create and achieve Whole peace in the arms of her bond mate. I know your fears might not allow you to believe me, considering it is what you love most at risk, but I will not interfere in their lives.”

That answer led to a larger question, tears stinging her eyes and not wanting to know in many ways, considering how lots of other truths had turned out. “And the kiss… at the Crucible?”

Tears appeared in his eyes as well. “Had I been a good man at that moment, I would have asked you to sleep, I would have given you to Garrus. The only kiss would have been my lips upon your brow in goodbye. Yet I was not and I am not a good man and I do not own an apology I can offer in good faith. What you gave me in that moment and the searing reality of who you were in the next is an experience I required, the genesis of Highest Rightness. Yet it was the fruit of forcing your bond mate to helplessness through conspiring with Hemorus and you to desire with venom and guilt. You were not yourself by any measure. You were Shepard and trillions of Protheans, driven to isolated madness and hatred and still choosing each necessary step forward somehow. Once again, I demanded desire from you and you gave it because it was the only way you could reach or influence me. I did not understand. In many ways I still do not understand. You are a miracle and I am a supplicant. I forsake my counterfeit coin. I will cherish and protect what I know to be of true value. You. I cannot give you up. I know who you were, who you are, who the Sands have shown me you will be. Stolen or earned, I cannot live without your wellspring. I will not.”

His voice was broken and hoarse. She closed her eyes and let the tears fall, moved her forehead to his in a habitual action that was inspired by the easy love of her bond mate, touching to a crest that was not a crest and was not plate. 

She hadn’t betrayed Garrus. She hadn’t betrayed herself. She hadn’t betrayed Senar.

“Hear me, Drala’tem. I was not the only one that did not see. In the same way I saw and invoked desire when you offered love because it is your nature, you see and invoke guilt when I offer service because it is my nature.”

Her hand moved to behind his head, where there was no fringe but textured skin with venom tingling on her fingertips and palm. She whispered “You tried to drink the green sea. Someone should have told you that makes men mad. Senar, you saved the galaxy.”

“I did not. I saved your life but robbed the future of your inspiration and example. I robbed you… of your inspiration and example You… would have saved the galaxy. Drala’tem, had you taken the path of Synthesis as you intended, life would have been perfect. For everyone. By taking your will I cost the galaxy that. This is the question you do not know how to ask, the question I do not know how to answer. The reason why you are here. I owe that debt. I owe that debt to you, yet I cannot pay it forward to the future without you. The Crucible would have required your consciousness to form that new galaxy. So do I. People suffer and they would not have had you dissolved into green. That kiss… Drala’tem, that kiss is the romance that condemned quadrillions to pain. I deserve your hate and your anger. You could have granted immortality, inspiration and direct uplink to yourself, direct communion. Garrus would not have lost you. You would have endured as the inspiration for all, your consciousness suffusing the mold of each remaining life that epitomized synthetic and organic pinnacles of achievement in one flashing brilliant moment inspired by the green of your eyes. You sacrificed your faith in yourself, your faith in your wellspring at the Crucible in my name. You believed your wellspring would bring you to selfless sacrifice, and it would have, had I not blocked your Path at the final step. Now I must try to repair what could have been. You must be a vital, living part of the future. I must help you heal, to restore you to your place as the source of inspiration for things of Rightness. To bring your light to every corner of existence, as it should have been.”

She wanted to tell him he was crazy and deluded and she realized she just had.

‘It’s all too much’ seemed to be her new motto and she had to make it an… un-motto?

She tried to make ‘quadrillions’ real and calculate the cost he was saying was true.

She couldn’t. It was just… information.

She’d been treating him like just information.

She was in shock. Obviously.

She looked at him and he looked as though he were about to lose everything, everyone.

He already believes he has lost everything.

He’s trying to salvage…

He doesn’t see himself as a God. She had robbed him of his - not humanity - Drellinity? Drellicity?

Looking at his face, she forgot numbers and information and remembered here and now. She used to know what having to do something meant, what it cost, and she was not done. He needed her. He always had. She’d known that.

He was trapped and she was trapped because she demanded separation and he allowed it though he needed communion. Right now she gave grudging communion laced with pain and he required voluntary communion. Ideally joyous communion, giving herself fully to him and to their life together. She was wary of his bliss, wary of his illusions and theater. Wary of this new impossible truth. But her wariness was backfiring and she would soon find herself, or him, lost to hatred and pain if she did not do something. Now. He had promised not to invade her mind and as a result she was writhing in solitary doubt, fear and pain with him desperately begging her to allow him to rescue her from herself. To have faith.

Except you thought he was trying to rebuild a galaxy. He feels he destroyed its potential and yours and he doesn’t know how to fix it or if he can. 

So…

What if his theater wasn’t an invasion but a tutorial?

She wanted to tell herself she was crazy and deluded and realized that was redundant information.

She tried to recall what her idea had been before, what might help their forward path. She said in shock-appropriate tones “All right. So we’re here. We can’t change our past. Unless we have a time machine. Or unless we use what you can do, who we are to each other, to create a virtual one and use it wisely. We can’t choose blue or green anymore. We chose Manipar. I did that. I chose Manipar. I did not believe it was true, but it’s true. I thought then that you deserved to be loved, enough to fill an eternity. You do, and I can… I do… love you that much. The lives we lived before are over and now what remains is the promise to live the next one together. To get it right.” She didn’t have to read minds to know he had his own burden of despair, deeper than she knew, and they might both fail, right here, and drown in the deep wells they’d both brought with them. Her words rushed in to fill the empty space. “So show me.”

“Show you what?” 

He could read her mind, but the whirl of thought was still forming like tendrils of storm but had not yet touched down. He could not read the chaos clearly. He wasn’t the only one, but her speed still remained and that was a comfort in reclaimed identity. She was still herself. “So… you stole me. Garrus did too. Now you have a time machine. We can agree to meet in a moment out of time in order to set things right. So show me need. Show me your need. Show me the Sands. Show me why you are so very romantic and why it was worth it, why we are going to move forward together. When… when did you first want me?” 

“I am afraid that demonstration would require a table.” He was in shock too. But they were both so very good at this. Expectation and demand. Everything is going to be fine. 

Her brows rose high as her eyes opened in surprise “No. Really? With me so completely opposed?”

“And me able to convince you with my will only.”

“And you haven’t? Or did you and then you made me forget?”

“My Drala’tem, when I saw you first, I saw Siha. My Sands and your Sea hinted at their will. But when you led me to lose at Pon-Ifa as I considered seducing you on that table it was too late. Your love of the game, my desire for you were set and it remained so and will remain so.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I cannot stress enough that I am not. This is the point of trust and magnitude that eludes you, Drala’tem. When I tell you that your inspiration is powerful, when I tell you the Sands speak to me, when you doubt me, it is as though you tried to tell me of the Prothean beacon’s full impact upon you and as a result I believed it made you slightly melancholy for an afternoon. You are in fact not the only person that has strong emotions and motivations rooted in experience and aspiration. Granted I perhaps do not deserve trust, but nor do I deserve to have the primal motivation of my mortal life and Immortal Godhood robbed from me and trivialized because it happens to be you and because you assign your own worth as zero therefore it must be so for all.”

“Okay… if you put it that way… Sorry about that. So… you can make me feel anything, right? Take me there. Show me. You have a virtual time machine. Use it. If I ask you to show me, then it’s not against my will, and if the table isn’t real then you’re not changing who I am or forcing me to experience something I don’t want to truly experience. It’s a dream state. We have both provided separate nightmares invested with our fears. You are capable of providing a lucid dream invested with your memories and motivations. We’re exploring who you are through an iteration of potential time. I will trust that what you show me is what you experienced. I bet I can learn to need you and want you if you show me how. Show me why. You know all my whys.”

With the sound of a pressured release of air from him in breath and suspense, it appeared he needed no more persuasion or invitation. Conditions and caresses poured from him with inspired genesis of unique permissions, once again something shared between them, her thoughts turned into his will and then their actions. His hands gripped her shoulders as he turned her fully to face him with her straddling his thighs. His lips spread fervent kisses along her cheeks and neck interspersed with his set pronouncements as each wave of creation spilled into her like watercolors and then sharpened into seeming reality around them.

“You were resurrected to fight Reapers, but not in secret and it was done quickly and with faith, the outcome assured and known to your crew. Garrus admired you while you lived but you and he never had a dinner with apple juice and hope. You developed the friendship and admiration that was the hallmark of your working relationship and it sustained you both throughout your missions. You never recorded a will. Instead of becoming Councilor, after your death Garrus Vakarian became a Spectre and fell in love with Hemorus as Project Lazarus progressed. They live in bonded and bloodied bliss. They fight with you as loyal crew, stalwart colleagues and dearest friends. Your Ilos-inspired dossiers were given to Solana, who became Councilor. She and her Turian bond mate serve Palaven and the Citadel well. You have all the support you need for your fight. You recruited me on Ilium.”

She smiled at the push of wellbeing along her nerves, projected intention and referred hope of how happy Garrus and Hemorus could be now or could have been then, without broken bond and the horror of the prospect of her permanent loss. She remained focused on her mission, solitary but not lonely as a result. Confident she had been the right person, done the right thing, for the right outcome. She liked this reality. Happiness for them was whole and organic and this was a good world.

“With those factors changed, my original plan can have a different outcome. I have lured a shying, brilliant woman who possesses the most glorious eyes I have ever seen, will ever see, to my quarters to play a game I believe will show her the basic steps of how I will seduce her and she will see the pieces but not my goal. Her.”

She gasped “You did not.”

“Oh yes, my Drala’tem. I did. As I described the board…” The image of the room was suddenly Drell-memory clear, emotionally invested and highlighted, seen through the eyes and mind of Thane Krios, his assessments of measured potentials, art and subterfuge and the slow intended stalking of prey he found worthy of his attention.

“I wanted her to look at me.” The dream had a thick inrush of a hunger that defied and confounded her experience, a sharp and deep selfishness that she had always rejected but he embraced as a lover would, as he embraced her now. There was no potential or accepted boundary or limit to it, permission and passion that fed on itself and increased in accumulated dark mass and gravity moment by moment. Out of control inherently and celebrated for that fact, sought and coveted for rarity and worth. He had wished to touch her then as he did now, mouth and hands and mind. She swallowed hard and trembled as the mirage became more real, as the sense of remote observation or learning faded and all that remained was experiencing his need in the crafted moment. She-He felt the gravitational pull of his desire to have her lift her eyes to his, to meet, to connect, to know what his intent was, who he would become for her. He saw a woman he would guide, protect, take and keep.

The not-real-yet-real-to-him woman lifted her eyes with her ignorance and knowing blending with his intent. She saw her-not-her as powerful, vulnerable, innocent, beautiful and with eyes holding his destiny in their green depths.

She was his and his satisfaction with that now-and-future fact fed his hunger, lust and possessiveness. She was Siha and the Sands would deliver her to him. He was certain. He would not stop in bringing that to truth, sustaining that as Truth.

It was sharp and deep, a plunge of a blade to the bone, the tip embedded and his skeleton scarred. He was hers. His arm belonged to her, her will was law, he would give his life for her gladly and beg for the privilege in all ways but words.

The God-of-now observing the man-of-then would not apologize to her-not-her and his only regret was that he had not known that if he were to look through her eyes, he would see himself glowing with Siha-assigned gold that would light each step of his Path.

The meaning of her name, Drala’tem, became clear as a representation of his constant experience of her, of being in her presence, of imagining her when he was in the dark of her absence. The prized realization of what lay in his pierced bones, the scars he did not form, why he bled, what was worthy of every ounce of his effort. Her. She was the embodiment of the deepening funnel of time and intent, the dark twisting of the fabric of reality that pulled all green light and gold-sparking dark into a pinpoint of rushing desire and meaningful purpose. She felt herself physically choke on her breath in her real body, overwhelmed. Too much, all wrong. He was possessive and paralyzing, seeing her in ways she was not. He made her a Goddess, he made her an Illusion, she was a Thing. She was and would be only human, failed and flawed. She was angry that this much alteration was required, horrified that this was the expectation and demand. That if she disappointed him - and she would - he would substitute this reality. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, all intellectual agreements of torture and tolerance and acceptance gone if this was what she faced.

Never. She’d thought he loved her, she really had. He loved… this. The power over her. He wanted to… fuck… Commander Shepard and her gorge rose, instinctive and visceral need to escape making her thrash, causing him to restrain her further as he was caught in his own instinctive and visceral needs.

If this was the basis of his fantasies it was doomed to crashing disappointment and failure, just as she’d always known. He was selfish and denying reality, assigning value where there was none. Valuing what he could invest her with and then take from her. The power he saw was measured in what he could rob from her and claim as his. The beauty he saw in her was a reflection of his potential prize. She was a piece on that board, lifeless and cold-slick in molded form, shining only with what he could do with her, bloodless with the only potential warmth in her referred from his hands when he touched her. Warmth would never be more than skin deep and never hers. It closed around her like straps applied while being mummified, helpless and still alive, slit open clinically and without anesthesia as she was paralyzed with horror, organs removed to canopic jars he could set on a shelf to admire and straps of all the right fabrics and colors applied to her life-drained skin. Her moments on the tile in the salon bathroom were revealed as prophecy, her shaking fit a foreshadowing of the fact that this was what would happen to her. The cold surged and the straps tightened and she panicked, the sense of horror and rejection signaling the colossal mistake of trying to see through his eyes, feel through his body.

Please, no more truths. Please, make me forget this. I can’t. I won’t. I’d rather be turned into this thing completely, soul eviscerated. Make a body that looks like… that thing… that does what you want, leave me out of it. Out of it all. I can’t.

She choked on knowing that would never happen, that part of the ‘fun’ was having her trapped, owned.

She was going to be an owned object. He’d lied. If not to her, than to himself, he was going to see the entire galaxy this way, eventually demanding everything serve his image of what he could have, what he could take.

She felt the whispering echo of his real hand on her real back, the introduction of warm force that regulated her breath so she would not pass out. “Stay with me, Drala’tem. Always. My memory of you in this moment set the hunt. I was not a humble Tasak but Amonkira’s blessed. God touched. God determined. She is mine.”

She thought that this was at God speed and God intensity and his laugh against the skin of her throat was rueful, the air somehow rippling with confirmation of honest transmission of fact “No, Drala’tem. You would be dead were that so. I will not deny the potential of what you see, what you feel, but this is but a humble beginning.”

She laugh-choked at the use of the word ‘humble.’

“Your stories carry the same horror for me, Drala’tem. You do not protect yourself. You are the seed in the dark and the cold that will not reach for sun because perhaps others need that sun, that will not dig roots into the ground because it is too dark, you will not reach for the sky because you might cast a shadow upon another. I know your story. Know mine. This is my seed. This seed gathered everything to itself. It demanded growth. It took what it wanted. That is what life does, Drala’tem. You told Sooth this. Growth is selfish. I was selfish. I am selfish. I am still growing. You must choose the same fate or your potential will rot in the ground. Our stories begin in the blind dark but they will not stay there. What you feel is not wrong, but it is not the full story. This… is what it felt like… feels like… for me to be in your presence, to demand your eyes, to wish to do exactly this…”

Escorted from breath to dream his hand in the newly focused reality pulled her wrist toward him and she was lifted bodily up in numbed shock, the impact of that expression in her eyes causing a blinding surge of lust that galvanized him and stunned her into passive compliance. The mystery of the power of the table was solved suddenly, hard cold metal unyielding beneath her prone body and the press of a heated and even more unyielding man above her as her hands were captured in one of his and held over her head, his mouth finding hers. The intended spill of referred lust and venom showed her where his breaking point was, where it always had been, and what he had restrained himself from doing to her, with her, every moment in her presence after this point in real time. She had been in constant danger of this outcome with each of his deliberate breaths resolving to let moments pass without touching her. It was what he’d meant when he said he knew he would not hurt her and that he knew what he might have done if she’d awakened him first and told him of Kolyat. Had Kolyat been dead and had she slit his throat herself it would still have been this. Every time, this. All the time, this. It did not matter if he admired her, was angry at her, resented or adored her, or all four and several other emotions at once as was his common experience. It did not matter that he had aspired to be a platonic mentor, a protector and guide, it would have been this. It clouded each memory of her like a signature perfume, the wasted and anticipated potential of the shock in her eyes and that exact stunned in-breath and whimper she gave him in response to his touch.

He showed her all his attempts to ‘contain’ it and the futility of that effort. Her presence was a drug that once tasted set his course with no hope of escape from that fate, eventually no wish to escape from that fate, a devoted slave to opportunity. The draw of her eyes hijacked each motivation and each attempt at walking a different Path. She saw/felt him standing in prayer over a sand table as he accepted that there was no escape, that his will and pride were irrelevant. He had become a channel for this, the primal experience of loving her, and he aspired to no greater purpose. There was no greater purpose. The visceral tearing and dissolution of ego spilled over and through to her “I did not contain it, Drala’tem. It grew. It fed itself. It took from me. It set roots in my spine and sapped the strength from my bones to feed itself. Attempting to starve it made it stronger. Attempting to feed it made it stronger. Fighting it made it stronger. Accepting it made it stronger. Just as you sensed that in the beginning who you truly were was irrelevant to this process… so was I.”

She had impressions of him watching her sleep for hours, clamoring with hunger and fantasy and the need to find his inevitable moment where he was free to cross to her and wake her, touch her, whisper to her and ensure she knew that he belonged to her. From the origins of cold, remote awakening she became the warmth of the sun he needed. He grew. His cold, hard bones softened and heated, invested with what horrified him; weakness and service and mindless seeking. He was transformed as it fed on him. He did not feed on her any more than one could feed upon the sun. The sun radiates and gives, takes nothing back, but also does not speak or acknowledge those who live or die by her rays. To the sun, the light she casts is simply her nature, the fact that it might give life to a remote and cold place or person ironically nothing to her as she experienced her core and radiance as a natural state she assumed others had at their disposal. As she watched people disintegrate in her brilliance and gravity when they tried to approach her, she learned to protect them and shield them from her Self. She had always been too bright, too fast, too much and she had cooled and slowed around others to comfort them.

Thane watched this, uncomprehending and certain he would plunge into her core and burn. Thane was insignificant, ultimately disposable and he’d give his life willingly. He watched her, indulging private hungers but shielding her from them. Amid the urges to prove ownership, there were urges to hold her, protect her, sacrifice for her. The cloth he chose to adorn and enhance her rose and fell on her skin with her innocent, treasured breath. When that opportunity was robbed from him and she had cruelly removed him from their quarters he was infuriated and despairing, replaying each moment, inventing more. Memory failed him because the memory of the sun does not truly warm the cold. He felt his growth stop and still, his only choice hibernation as he could not behold her. He needed her. She was not a Thing. She was a Symbol and a Sign. She was the Sun. He waited as the cold hunger ravaged him until there was nothing left he could think about, nothing else he could do but wait for dawn and attempt gratitude for the opportunity rather than express the snarling possession and earned right of Manipar that cramped his mind and muscles.

He found his prayer.

“There is a soul and when you sense them, follow them, lead them, cherish them, love them, for the choices you will make together will be greater than the choices you could make separately. Through them you will be Whole.”

He had painted his life, tattooed those words, that thought, upon his skin, in the rhythmic walls of his heart, in his venom, circling his scarred bones in spiraling sigil as he felt his death approach. He would find her.

It was not about sex or possession. It was about meaning. It was about love and growth and greater purpose. He would find her and they would begin again, he could be a star and orbit her, trade the corona that leaped between them. 

When he died, all his tattoed intent lived and sang, the template of his Godhood. She was broken and battered and so was the galaxy. They belonged to him, they belonged to themselves, they belonged together. The Sands promised that as a reward for their Work would be their matching and blessed minds and bodies, their gifted complementary presences that would make being together what was destined and promised. With the knowledge of the Reapers he surveyed history. Something… Gods or Physics… he knew it as Sands… had crafted life. To create life there was sex, mindless and possessive and pleasure saturated in order to assure survival. Survival was what was at stake. As the demands of survival were infinite and eternal as they guided the galaxy, so would be the rewards of sex in recompense. Sex was the pinnacle of what the body could achieve in pleasure, in selfishness and growth. The Sands had crafted love in order to assure lasting partnership and lasting partnership was what was at required. It was the pinnacle of what the mind could achieve in pleasure of communion and belonging, in giving. Simple and complicated things, what the Universe had mindlessly developed in order to ultimately create and sustain the potentially Mindful. They would be the Mindful and build upon what had come before. 

He could no longer bear distance from her eyes, could no longer justify their bodies being un-joined, his impatience with the fantasy rippling out as his will to make her see and feel what was true overwhelmed Him-Her-Them. As his hands passed over her skin there was the gold of his aura, the gold of his shimmering and uncontrolled biotics, pleasure pouring from his fingertips directly into her, for her, his hands to either side of her face, desperation and determination and the need to be known glare-pleading for her to finally see. One of his oft-repeated fantasies overlapped the moment, his hands on her body, venom slick on her lips, her head against his shoulder as she gazed up at him and he down at her. Her eyes were filled with paralyzed and stunned pleasure that she might see as negating who she was, but he saw it as filling her with every potential of sex and love, of life and creation. It was his new ambition, their new potential as he filled her moments with why life was worth living, the distilled truth of thousands of cycles and the starting point for any future achievements of bliss. Her eyes held all he could give her, her breath carried soft gasps, his body rocking hers as he knew he honored the old and the new, he honored her and he would make things Right. Who he was cherished and protected each possible moment of this state with enveloping wings that arced around them, the magnetic bands of intent and Godhood, cherishing everything that made her mortal and human and his to protect and please, dancing with her innocent and treasured breath. 

“Drala’tem, you are mine. I am yours. We are composed of the mistakes of the past and the ambitions of the future. The Sands were cruel but I must not be. Evolution was blind but you must light the Path for all now. You are the guideline of template, the dormant seed of growth. I am the drafting hand and the gardener. This is our duty. We did not choose. We were Chosen.”

The surging demand in his body drove him into her, gold shimmer sparking across and within, the rushing velocity of his declarations transmuted to frenzied claiming and the roaring layers of intended completion and commitment. Destiny and Rightness of the gift of her Body, Mind and Spirit defined perfection for Him, her scream and his echoing thorough satisfaction with that event declaring its right to root, to seek, to grow.

Their new prayer. 

He was trembling and terrified, jagged pain and guilt now in the air around them, discharging in skeins of tangled darkness and falling cold. It rose off him like grey-pearled smoke from his spine and then fell with dread on his back in acid-ice splashes, the residue of having being as raw-exposed as she was. His body shielded her from it and he would not allow it to touch her.

She had her own self-fulfilling prophecies that had begun with and continued with gold light. All the mistakes that came from simple and innocent starting points like hot chocolate and all the mistakes that came from complicated and nefarious starting points like luring a woman who was not available, who had the sophistication of a baby deer trying to hide in the middle of the road. The auras they were surrounded with right now weren’t true, but it had begun in her mind and moved to his, and when the hope had left her he had carried it for her and given it back, not to mock her but to restore her to herself. It would always surround them because he had faith, because he believed, because he knew. Because he would not allow her, her dreams or her vision to die. Because he needed her.

She was in contrast to his storm a quiet place of hope and of inspiration, and it was, would be, enough.

There was a galaxy to choose, to desire, to love. A galaxy that needed them. 

Love encompassed and did not exclude.

Manipar delivered.

If he was a black hole that had torn apart Rightness, he required fuel to create a new reality and she had plenty of light to do that. To keep her God going, she would be that for him. Always. Her nature was the opposite of his, radiant where he was gravitational. She had permission to shine. It was demanded that she do so. She smiled at him and rubbed her nose to his. She imagined a small Drell boy, dapper and solemn and precious potential while he slept. It was early morning on Kahje and she had snuck into his room with a time machine. Like you do. She woke him and saw smaller-but-the-same eyes open and see her as her hand stroked his brow, innocent Drell-child venom warm on her fingertips. She brought the sun to his room in the middle of the night. “Hi. My name is Cara. I love you. I love a lot of things but you are special in ways I can’t explain but are still true. I brought vanisfruit. I’m willing to bribe you if you’d consider running away with me. I’ve got stories to tell you, but you might not believe me. What matters is that if you do come with me, there’s a lot of stories you won’t have to tell yourself alone. Come with me. Please.” She knew he would look in her eyes and see mysterious green he had to follow, as she saw his kindling sparking gold. Suspicion and then curiosity and then bravery lit his face and she took his hand. 

Some things were destined no matter the starting conditions. She had faith. 

Their choices had led them here. Their choices would lead them forward.

Her lips moved to kiss him and he fed her the effect her reaching out for him in any way had on him, delicate and shattering. 

They both had to forgive each other and embrace each other for selfish/selfless delusion, shared reckless aspiration resulting in currently guilt-hobbled Godhood that they must guide to tandem creation.

She held his face between her hands, trembling and sure of the next step. “I see you. You tried to explain and I did not understand. I’m sorry. I forgive you. I need you. I will need you. Run away with me, Senar Tuelon. Hold still with me. I love you.”

He panted and shook, repeating physical gestures of kisses and caresses as the surrounding illusion faded, leaving them together on the table. She touched him with reverent gentleness along his brow, the curve of his frill, measuring his harsh breath and twitching muscles in response. Enjoying it because it was something she caused, something small but powerful. She would never be athletically sexual to the extent that she was going to slam him against a wall. (Right here his breath sucked in and she got the distinct impression that was a loss to be mourned.) But she’d always want to feel this, see this, him, under gentle fingertips and loving eyes that held him in thrall and thanksgiving.

She said with mock rueful regret “I’ll just have to get used to the idea that you did, do and will want me. Sold on that front. You are going to have to get used to the idea that I did, do and will love you. There never was anything you could do to change that. That’s all me.”

His eyes opened and a shudder passed through him as he gathered her hands again in his, held them over her head and repeated rubbing her nose with his. His eyes drifted closed in a long exhale and then opened, his answer pouring down in reflective gold cascades that scattered across skin and sank through them in exquisite twining sensation ribbons as holographic Pon-Ifa pieces animated and spun in the air. “If you think, my Drala’tem, that a distraction of that magnitude is going to earn your freedom from this table any time soon, you are mistaken.”

She laughed and he kissed the open curves of her moving lips, huffs of his own laughter and fervent groans that led her to say “So are all the potentials of walls next?”

He nodded against the curve of her throat “Sands, yes. I thank you for your inspiration.” Then with a teasing lilt to his thoughts and the way he touched her he said “Gods help me, I wanted you on the Collector ship, on that console.”

Thankfully he did not provide a visual. “Ew! That’s it, I’m leaving.”

His laughter and hers were beautiful things together, rippling through the dreamscape and causing real bodies to lean in, his hand in her hair as she snorted and he savored each remembered, created and parallel moment that he could draw together and share with her, layered and lovely. In the dream she lifted her head, kissed his nose and smiled at him. “Okay. Maybe I’m staying. Turns out, my eternity is free.”

“Your eternity is taken, Drala’tem.”

“And so is yours.” She wanted to touch his face but he did not wish to stop holding her down. She grinned when her impulse to move was again denied in favor of this particular inspiration. “You’re kind of a dufus, Senar.”

He scattered kisses along her jawline “I am not… a… dufus. That would put the galaxy in jeopardy.”

“Yeah you are. But I’ll still always sneak into your bedroom in the middle of the night and bring you yummy things with the intent to steal you away. Turns out I’m a bit of a dufus myself. You’re right about the galaxy thing. We should probably keep the dufus part to ourselves.”

“I can restrain myself from disclosing it if you can.”

She twisted her wrists in his hand and arched her neck, saying mournfully “Can’t tell anybody anyway, someone took my Omni Tool.”

Thoughts of the gentle roots of simple, organic and growing things were overshadowed but not overcome or destroyed by his storm cloud and passion, and she welcomed It. Him. Them. The rising tide of his memories and needs crested and she said “Still not sure about the table thing” breathlessly against his lips.

Gold-edged pleasure sliced her thoughts into pretty ribbons, streamers of too much and just right. His mouth lowered to hers and his growl echoed in the dream and the reality. “I am.”


End file.
